Feed aggregator

When it comes to conserving the world’s oceans, bigger isn’t necessarily better. Globally, there has been an increasing trend towards placing very large marine reserves in remote regions. While these reserves help to meet some conservation targets, we don’t know if they are achieving their ultimate goal of protecting the diversity of life.

In 2002, the Convention on Biological Diversity called for at least 10% of each of the world’s land and marine habitats to be effectively conserved by 2010. Protected areas currently cover 14% of the land, but less than 3.4% of the marine environment.

Australia’s marine reserve system covers more than a third of our oceans. This system was based on the best available information and a commitment to minimising the effects of the new protected areas on existing users. However, since its release the system has been strongly criticised for doing little to protect biodiversity, and it is currently under review.

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, we looked at the current and proposed marine reserves off northwest Australia – an area that is also home to significant oil and gas resources. Our findings show how conservation objectives could be met more efficiently. Using technical advances, including the latest spatial modelling software, we were able to fill major gaps in biodiversity representation, with minimal losses to industry.

A delicate balance

Australia’s northwest supports important habitats such as mangrove forests, seagrass beds, coral reefs and sponge gardens. These environments support exceptionally diverse marine communities and provide important habitat for many vulnerable and threatened species, including dugongs, turtles and whale sharks.

This region also supports valuable industrial resources, including the majority of Australia’s conventional gas reserves.

A 2013 global analysis found that regions featuring both high numbers of species and large fossil fuel reserves have the greatest need for industry regulation, monitoring and conservation.

Proposed and existing state and Commonwealth marine reserves in northwest Australia shown in relation to petroleum leases. Cordelia Moore Conservation opportunitites

Not all protected areas contribute equally to conserving species and habitats. The level of protection can range from no-take zones (which usually don’t allow any human exploitation), to areas allowing different types and levels of activities such tourism, fishing and petroleum and mineral extraction.

A recent review of 87 marine reserves across the globe revealed that no-take areas, when well enforced, old, large and isolated, provided the greatest benefits for species and habitats. It is estimated that no-take areas cover less than 0.3% of the world’s oceans.

In Australia’s northwest, no-take zones cover 10.2% of the area, which is excellent by world standards in terms of size. However, an analysis of gaps in the network reveal opportunities to better meet the Convention on Biological Diversity’s recommended minimum target level of representation across all species and features of conservation interest.

We provided the most comprehensive description of the species present across the region enabling us to examine how well local species are represented within the current marine reserves. Of the 674 species examined, 98.2% had less than 10% of their habitat included within the no-take areas, while more than a third of these (227 species) had less than 2% of their habitat included.

Into the abyss

Few industries in this region operate in depths greater than 200 metres. Therefore, the habitats and biodiversity most at risk are those exposed to human activity on the continental shelf, at these shallower depths.

However, the research also found that three-quarters of the no-take marine reserves are sited over a deep abyssal plain and continental rise within the Argo-Rowley Terrace (3,000-6,000m deep). These habitats are unnecessarily over-represented (85% of the abyss is protected), as their remoteness and extreme depth make them logistically and financially unattractive for petroleum or mineral extraction anyway.

The majority of the no-take marine reserves lie over a deep abyssal plain. Cordelia Moore

Proposed multiple-use zones in Commonwealth waters provide some much-needed extra representation of the continental shelf (0-200m depth). However, all mining activities and most commercial fishing activities are permissible pending approval. This means that the management of these multiple-use zones will require some serious consideration to ensure they are effective.

A win for conservation and industry

An imbalance in marine reserve representation can be driven by governments wanting to minimise socio-economic costs. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other.

Our research has shown that better zoning options can maximise the number of species while still keeping losses to industry very low. Our results show that the 10% biodiversity conservation targets could be met with estimated losses of only 4.9% of area valuable to the petroleum industry and 7.2% loss to the fishing industry (in terms of total catch in kg).

Examples of how the no-take reserves could be extended or redesigned to represent the region’s unique species and habitats. Cordelia Moore

Management plans for the Commonwealth marine reserves are under review and changes that deliver win-win outcomes, like the ones we have found, should be considered.

We have shown how no-take areas in northwest Australia could either be extended or redesigned to ensure the region’s biodiversity is adequately represented. The cost-benefit analysis used is flexible and provides several alternative reserve designs. This allows for open and transparent discussions to ensure we find the best balance between conservation and industry.

Cordelia Moore has received funding from the University of Western Australia, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and CSIRO.

Clay Bryce receives funding from the Western Australian Museum and Woodside Energy.

Hugh Possingham receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The Department of The Environment (Australia) and a lot of other groups. He is affiliated with the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, Bush Heritage Australia and sits on heaps of boards and committees.

Oliver Berry receives funding from The Western Australian Marine Science Institution.

Romola Stewart has previously received funding from PEW Charitable Trusts Australia.

Ben Radford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

How long until we can send someone to the newly discovered earth-like planet, Proxima b? RN Drive puts the latest science news through the Research Filter.

Cast: AdelaideSBN

Cast: AdelaideSBN

Old Warden, Bedfordshire In this parched landscape it was clear the hedgerow fruit had not ripened a moment too soon for the badgers

It took only a few dry weeks for the fields on the plateau above the village to forget that it had ever rained. The clay soil was beginning to crack, the footpath had turned to a sun-baked dirt track and there was no yield underfoot. Every bump and stone was hard and uncompromisingly contoured, jabbing at an instep, stubbing a toe.

The worms had become dustbowl refugees in this parched landscape, sinking deep underground. Far below my feet, they would be aestivating, bunched up in knots, coated in their own mucus in a hibernation-like suspension of active life, waiting for moisture to come again.

Continue reading...

Gas has a problem. Without a carbon price, it's more expensive than coal. With a carbon price, it struggles to compete with renewables and storage.

Large scale solar contracts fall to $US30/MWh as solar prices fall in US - on rooftops and for solar farms.

A solar and storage energy management system developed by CSIRO and backed by AMP Capital has been launched in Australia.

What does last year's Paris agreement mean for Australia’s climate policy and decarbonisation?

ACCC says it's perfectly OK for big utilities to exercise their market power and force up prices, as they did to devastating effect in South Australia last month. And although the regulator identified the lack of competition in the state a decade ago, it still chooses to take a pot-shot at renewables.

India Government’s plan to dramatically expand coal power production is being buffeted by growing concern about worsening air quality, sluggish power demand.

New study redefines our understanding of when human activity began to influence our climate.

154 Australian experts have signed on open letter to Malcolm Turnbull demanding urgent action on climate change.

More than 150 leading climate scientists at universities and government agencies ask for cuts to coal exports, saying: ‘There is no Planet B’

I’m guessing that Malcolm Turnbull gets a fair few letters on any given day. You wonder how he has the time to read them all.

How do you prioritise the ones worth your attention, and the ones that you can toss in the round-shaped filing cabinet under your desk?

Continue reading...

Engineers in the US have built a self-contained, entirely soft robot - in the shape of a 7cm octopus.

For the first time, a soft robot has been built that moves on its own with no batteries or cables.

CLIMATE DATA: Human-induced global warming began as early as the 1830s just as the Industrial Revolution was gaining steam, a new study shows.

How do astronomers decide whether a planet is potentially habitable?

Britain's industrial pioneers couldn't have known how they would affect the climate. Henry Gastineau

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, no one would have thought that their burning of fossil fuels would have an almost immediate effect on the climate. But our new study, published today in Nature, reveals that warming in some regions actually began as early as the 1830s.

That is much earlier than previously thought, so our discovery redefines our understanding of when human activity began to influence our climate.

Determining when global warming began, and how quickly the planet has warmed since then, is essential for understanding how much we have altered the climate in different parts of the world. Our study helps to answer the question of whether our climate is already operating outside thresholds that are considered safe for human society and functional ecosystems.

Our findings show that warming did not develop at the same time across the planet. The tropical oceans and the Arctic were the first regions to begin warming, in the 1830s. Europe, North America and Asia followed roughly two decades later.

Surprisingly, the results show that the southern hemisphere began warming much later, with Australasia and South America starting to warm from the early 20th century. This continental-scale time lag is still evident today: while some parts of Antarctica have begun to warm, a clear warming signal over the entire continent is still not detectable.

The warming in most regions reversed what would otherwise have been a cooling trend related to high volcanic activity during the preceding centuries.

Global warming got underway much earlier in the north.

By pinpointing the date when human-induced climate change started, we can then begin to work out when the warming trend broke through the boundaries of the climate’s natural fluctuations, because it takes some decades for the global warming signal to “emerge” above the natural climate variability.

According to our evidence, in all regions except for Antarctica, we are now well and truly operating in a greenhouse-influenced world. We know this because the only climate models that can reproduce the results seen in our records of past climate are those models that factor in the effect of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by humans.

These remarkable findings were pieced together from the most unusual of sources – not thermometers or satellites, but rather from natural climate archives. These include coral skeletons, ice cores, tree rings, cave deposits and ocean and lake sediment layers, all of which record the climate as they grow or accumulate.

These archives provide long records that extend back 500 years – well before the Industrial Revolution – and provide a critical baseline for the planet’s past climate, one that is impossible to obtain otherwise.

But why is there no clear warming fingerprint yet seen across Antarctica? The answer most likely lies in the vast Southern Ocean, which isolates the frozen continent from the warming happening elsewhere.

The westerly winds that circulate through the Southern Ocean around Antarctica keep warm air masses from lower latitudes at bay. Ozone depletion and rising greenhouse gas concentrations during the 20th century have also caused this wind barrier to get stronger.

The Southern Ocean currents that flow around Antarctica also tend to move warmer surface waters away from the continent, to be replaced with cold deeper water that hasn’t yet been affected by surface greenhouse warming. This process could potentially delay Antarctica’s warming by centuries.

Ocean insulation

The delay in warming observed in the rest of the southern hemisphere is something we do not yet fully understand. It could simply be because fewer records are available from the southern hemisphere, meaning that we still don’t have a full picture of what is happening.

Alternatively, like Antarctica, the southern hemisphere’s oceans could be holding back warming – partly through winds and currents, but perhaps also because of “thermal inertia”, whereby the ocean can absorb far more heat energy than the atmosphere or the land before its temperature markedly increases. Bear in mind that the southern half of the globe has much more ocean than the north.

Essentially, then, the coolness of the southern hemisphere’s vast oceans could be “insulating” Australasia and South America from the impact of global warming. The question is, for how long?

If our evidence of delayed warming in the southern hemisphere holds true, it could mean we are in in for more climate surprises as global warming begins to overcome the thermal inertia of our surrounding oceans. Could the recent record warming of Australian waters, and the subsequent damage to the Great Barrier Reef, be an early sign that this is already occurring?

Recent research suggest that the mass bleaching event of the reef was made 175 times more likely by climate change. Following the recent severity of such extremes, a better understanding of how anthropogenic greenhouse warming is already impacting the southern hemisphere is critical.

What to do about it

Leading scientists from around the world met in Geneva last week to discuss the goal of limiting average global warming to 1.5℃ – the more ambitious of the two targets enshrined in the Paris climate agreement.

Last year, global temperatures crossed the 1℃ threshold, and 2016 is on track to be 1.2-1.3℃ above our climate baseline.

But here’s the kicker. That baseline is relative to 1850–1900, when most of our thermometer-based temperature records began. What our study shows is that for many parts of the world that estimate isn’t good enough, because global warming was already under way, so the real baseline would be lower.

The small increases in greenhouse gases during the 19th century had a small effect on Earth’s temperatures, but with the longer perspective we get from our natural climate records we see that big changes occurred. These fractions of a degree of extra warming might seem insignificant at first, but as we nudge ever closer to the 1.5℃ guardrail (and potentially beyond), the past tells us that small changes matter.

Helen McGregor will be online to answer your questions from 2pm AEST today. Post a query in the comments below.

Helen McGregor receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Joelle Gergis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Nerilie Abram receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Steven Phipps receives funding from the Australian Antarctic Science Program, the Australian Research Council, the International Union for Quaternary Research, the National Computational Infrastructure Merit Allocation Scheme, the New Zealand Marsden Fund, the University of Tasmania and UNSW Australia.

Low-energy or zero-energy housing is international best practice, but is still considered costly. Part of the problem is that studies of housing standards typically use only cost-benefit analysis to assess their value, and so often wrongly conclude that sustainable housing is unaffordable.

Our new research shows how such analyses may miss some flow-on financial benefits – such as reduced energy bills and lower mobility costs. Most importantly, these analyses also overlook effects on householders' health and quality of life arising from factors such as improved thermal comfort.

Sustainable housing can also have important benefits for some of the most vulnerable members of our community, as the report released this week shows.

The environmental performance of Australian housing has improved slowly, associated with changes in minimum building regulations and the creation of subsidies such as solar rebates. This is despite sustainable housing having many documented benefits, including lower (or non-existent) utility bills and greenhouse gas emissions, and improved comfort and health.

Conventional cost-benefit analyses exclude these benefits. That leaves significant gaps in the story that could be used to support investment in sustainable housing.

What did the study assess?

Our study involved a three-year, mixed-method evaluation of a small sustainable housing development in Horsham, Victoria. Commissioned by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the study used both quantitative and qualitative methods, which are rarely combined to assess housing policy and environmental performance.

Four two-bedroom, nine-star-rated (under the National House Energy Rating Scheme, NatHERS) houses were built to maximise passive solar principles. The design elements and technologies used included (partial) reverse brick-veneer construction, double-glazed windows, solar hot water, a 1.5-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system and a shared 5,000-litre rainwater tank.

The houses were built without air conditioning. They do have ceiling fans and gas heating in the living area.

We evaluated these nine-star houses against seven control houses also in Horsham and built to DHHS standards, with a six-star NatHERS rating. We also compared the results to a DHHS technical model of standard industry practice. We conducted a traditional cost-benefit analysis, technical performance analysis (utility consumption, internal temperature), three rounds of interviews with the householders during different seasons, and a personalised household sustainability assessment.

Through a traditional cost-benefit lens, the nine-star housing was not financially viable for DHHS. Even if DHHS was able to capture the savings to the householders, payback was only achieved within 40 years for one of the four dwellings in a high-energy-price future. This was due to higher-than-expected capital costs for the sustainability initiatives.

Falling short: the conventional cost-benefit outcome for the nine-star houses. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS

However, resale value could be up to A$40,000 higher per unit. The technical performance analysis also identified significant benefits for the nine-star households. These included reduced utility consumption and bills. One occupant told us:

Look, I haven’t paid any off my power bill in six months and I’m still in credit.

We found that these households:

• were A$1,000 a year better off as a result of reduced utility consumption (including solar feed-in tariff);

• purchased 45% less electricity than the control households (and 73% less than the standard industry practice);

• consumed 22% less water (30% less than the industry standard);

• had 40% less CO₂ environmental impact from power use (63% less than the industry standard); and

Car equivalent of environmental performance. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS

• were comfortable with the indoor temperature of their house for 10% more of the time (even without air conditioning).

Summary of average annual utilities consumed/generated from each dwelling. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS

Extreme weather events magnified the comfort benefits. On a second consecutive day above 41℃, the nine-star houses were up to 16.6℃ cooler (without air conditioning) compared to the department’s standard six-star house (which had air conditioning).

This meant householders could stay at home during heatwaves rather than needing to seek alternative accommodation, which happened sometimes for the control households. One occupant said:

…in summer I would sit down at the supermarket, you know, because it was cool … [Now] I can stay home and veg out.

Temperature in the living rooms of monitored houses and external temperature for January 18-19, 2013. RMIT Centre for Urban Research, DHHS Residents confirm well-being benefits

Interviews with residents highlighted positive social outcomes from living in sustainable housing, which supported the technical data. The benefits they described included improved health and personal finances.

For example, these householders said they had extra spending money due to low (or no) utility bills. This meant they could buy children Christmas presents, avoid personal debt and lay-by, or go on a holiday.

I do go clothes shopping on occasion now instead of thinking, “Oh God, I have to go and lay-by that.”

Householders described how this led to reduced stress and better mental health.

The research demonstrates that the housing sector’s over-reliance on cost-benefit analysis may be overlooking important benefits (and detriments) of different housing arrangements. Combining qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods can help uncover a more detailed and complete picture of how housing affects people’s lives.

Our research also highlights how sustainable housing benefits extend beyond the environment. These flow-on effects can improve the living conditions of some of the most vulnerable members of society. This, in turn, potentially reduces pressure on health and other support systems and sectors.

Combining sustainable and affordable housing

Our study is part of an emerging body of research that challenges the idea that sustainable housing is unaffordable.

The evidence increasingly shows that sustainability and good design can improve affordability when fuller cost-benefit analyses are undertaken and non-monetised social, health and well-being benefits are considered.

To date, however, there is limited “real world” research into people living in sustainable housing, particularly in the affordable housing sector. Without more multidisciplinary evaluations of this kind, we are left with an incomplete picture of the benefits of this type of housing.

Such studies will be critically important as Australia seeks to make the transition to a more sustainable future. Climate change and increased livability costs are likely to add to the challenges for social housing organisations and the tenants who depend on their services.

Trivess Moore receives funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council and Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.

Cecily Maller receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program of the Australian Government, the Australian Research Council, and the Victorian Government's Department of Housing and Human Services. She is affiliated with the Institute of Australian Geographers and The Australian Sociological Association.

Ralph Horne receives funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council and Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. He is also currently Director of the United Nations Global Compact - Cities Programme.

Yolande Strengers receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Energy Consumers Australia and the Victorian Government's Department of Health and Human Services.